I am a homeschooling mom of three. I have twins who are first graders and a 4 year old.

I first thought the lapbooks, or folder books, or notebooking was lame. I thought it was too much trouble for the work. But that was months ago. Now, I love it!

We were given a boxed curriculum, but it just did not work out. When we released ourselves of that box, we realised that our kids LOVED to learn!

So, we began lapbooking for all things Science, Social Studies, Geography and History. (I still teach the three "R"s with regular text books. (Found in resale shops believe it or not....)

I have seen many sites where you can buy projects, but I found that simply making our own stuff and showing the kids how to actually research the topics, made for MUCH more absorbtion (SP) of the topic.

Also, this week, I have decided that lapbooking, or notebooking is really just a fancy way of saying that we "Do unit studies and then SCRAP what we know... yes, Scrapbooking, right?

So, when I opened my mind to tie those to ideas togther, the creativity just exploded!

So we do "Unit Studies" and then we "Scrapbook" those things that we learn.

I'm trying to figure out how to work in a more complete history course for my 8th grader (I'm going to teach medieval history to both he and my 4th grader.) I came across a textbook by McDougal Littell that is geared for his age group that looked interesting. However, many of the activities are just not his or my style and would probably take several years to complete if I tried to get him to do everything. Otoh, I thought it might actually be interesting to him and I if I had him make a lapbook for each unit (8 units in the book, 2 chapters per unit, 3-4 lessons per chapter) where he basically produces something short, sweet and small for each lesson objective and at the end of the unit, put it all together.

Hmm, does this make sense?

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking of using lapbooks/scrapbooks for. If nothing else, there will be some spiffy things to show an evaluator if I have to do that.

PS. frogguruami, what wonderful lapbooks! I have to get a digital camera...